Breaking down the Chicago Baseball Happiness Scale

The Chicago Baseball Happiness Scale is a comprehensive if unscientific attempt to quantify the happiness that each baseball team gives to its fans in any season. To create it, we used the 1998 and 2003 Cubs, and the 2000 and 2005 White Sox as models, listing every element that factored into a Cubs or Sox fan's emotional experience for a given season. We then turned those elements into categories and assigned each category a point value, finding as many concrete metrics as possible. They are:

>> .5 points per regular season win

>> 2 points per milestone regular season game (EXAMPLES: a no-hitter, a perfect game, or the rare "Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris' record vs. Sosa and the Cubs" game)

>> 1 point per all-star

>> 1 point per league leader in key Triple Crown categories for batters (batting average, home runs, RBI) and pitchers (ERA, strikeouts, or wins)

>> 1 point per individual "benchmark" season for batters (.330 average, 40 home runs) and pitchers (20 wins, ERA under 3.00)

>> 2 points for a manager who fans feel gives them The Edge (playoff teams only)

>> 2 points for winning the Wild Card round

>> 5 points for winning the pennant

>>.5 points per LCS game win

>> 15 points for winning the World Series

>> 1 point per WS game win

In terms of tabulations, the scale was created, the rest was about plugging in numbers. The difficult part was assigning numerical value to the intangibles of a season. This was the ultimate question: In the end, how did you FEEL?

Thus the Magic Scale, which added 1 to 10 points to each team's total, along with the Pain Scale, which subtracted 1 to 10 points from each team's total.